Spring 1, 001
It was a chilly morning when Fluffy stepped outside her home and looked around. There was hardly a soul in sight at this hour as the sun hadn't even come up yet. The beautiful inari was not all too keen on being out on her own, but it was the price to pay for not having any friends in town yet. The last time she had been given leave to live on her own had been hundreds of years ago and with Kage gone she was going to be on her own for a while, so long as she kept her nose relatively clean. She was hoping to apply some of the things she learned about pacing to today's training regimen and hopefully learn a couple more things today.
Today, Fluffy would be shooting to run further and faster than before. Her motivation was to not get choked up on her own phlegm when she had to run for more than a couple minutes. In truth, she really did not care about her own speed, but she was planning on helping Kage in the field someday. That would undoubtedly mean that she would have to be in good shape. She didn't have the time or the patience to be trailing behind his treants! Fluffy's memory vividly reminded her of the time that she and Kage's treants had been chased down by a feral beast. The slowest treants in the group had gotten slaughtered that day and Fluffy wasn't looking to die any time soon.
Fluffy sat on the dirty ground and began her stretching exercises. She had no idea how to properly stretch, but she might as well copy what she had seen others do in the past. She reached towards her toes and pushed through the pain of doing so. "Is this supposed to hurt?" She would then fold her legs and press down on her knees only to feel more pain. She would immediately stop and exclaim in pain when she decided that the pain was not worth bearing. Her legs were throbbing as if she had just tried jumping as high as she could. Something about this whole situation seemed wrong to her. She had always seen athletic people stretching, but perhaps she was going about it incorrectly.
"Okay, maybe I will stretch after I warm up then," she would think as she got to her feet and started jumping up and down. As she did so, she would feel blood pump throughout her body and notice that her legs were loosening up. Fluffy kept jumping for several minutes then sat down to stretch again. This time around, it was much easier to stretch and it didn't hurt nearly as much. "I guess I have to warm up my muscles before stretching them. Maybe using them a little before stretching makes them a little more ready for punishment? I just don't want to injure myself and be out for a couple weeks!"
Fluffy finished her stretching then started to jog. She had become comfortable with keeping a pace, but she wondered what she could actually do to increase her speed. "Just running a lot can make me faster but there has to be a limit. I'm sure I have to build up some leg muscles so that I can push harder. But out of all the muscles in my legs I have no idea which ones are actually important." Fluffy wasn't quite sure how a runner was supposed to build up leg muscles - perhaps she would have to try that another day. "I wonder if there's some kind of exercise facility in this town."
Soon after Fluffy started her jog, and soon came across a hill. She had learned to avoid hills in her travels, as they were nothing but a waste of energy. However this particular pathway before her had no branches to follow. "It looks like I have to tackle this one head on," she would think as she pushed her legs to carry her up the hill. She immediately found that it was extremely difficult to run uphill; it was much harder than walking at least. She looked at all the houses lining the street and wondered who in the world would want their home on such a steep hill.
The inari woman stopped running and groaned. Her ankles were aching after attempting to run up the hill because they hadn't adjusted well to running on an incline. She also felt like she was pushing off with a different part of her foot when running at an angle. "Maybe if I try running on the balls of my foot it will be easier," Fluffy would think as she took off again. This time it was much easier to keep going, albeit the difficulty of maintaining momentum was still astronomically high. She wanted to simply sit down and roll down the hill and follow a different road!
Fluffy made it to the top of the hill and was filled with pride when she looked over her shoulder and saw how far she had come. But one quick glance in the distance told her that she had many more hills to go. She stared down and realized that going down a steep hill was more intimidating than going up one. The woman started off slowly, but quickly found that her speed was increasing exponentially. Her steps became wider and wider apart until she and to throw herself to the ground to stop moving. After several rolls and many painful thumps, Fluffy came to a stop and thought about how she could tackle this challenge.
"So my speed picks up that fast eh? I wonder if it's even possible to keep the same pace." Fluffy took her steps carefully at a walking pace and felt that she had to fight her own body from moving forwards faster. She pushed off with her back leg and found that she had to push back with her front leg. Mildly annoyed at the inefficiency of it all, Fluffy repeated this process with a jogging pace. She found that it was harder to make herself not speed up than it was to actually run. Nevertheless, it was possible and she eventually made it to the bottom of this first hill mostly unharmed.
The next thing Fluffy had to contend with was stiff joints. Her knees where killing her after having to run up and down the hill. Much more so than if she had run double the distance on a flat surface. "Now that I think about it, my feet were the ones doing the pushing but my knees were the ones that absorbed all the force of impact. It's no wonder I'm in so much pain!" Fluffy found herself unable to continue running for the time being and plopped down on the side of the road. She wondered how she was ever going to get home if she was in this state. She also needed to figure out a way to prevent this kind of injury in the future.
"What if I didn't have to run up at a steep angle," she thought to herself, "what if I ran sideways up and down the hill so that my knees only have to take a little bit of punishment at a time? That would at least solve my joint problem." It was an idea that ended up being quite effective in theory, but not that practical on a somewhat busy road. Fluffy would take advantage of gaps in the foot traffic to run sideways then back to the edge of the road. It would have been a great strategy if she was alone, but alas she had to further endure the pain in her knees.
She was nearing the end of her ability to keep going. She found that she had run several times as far as her previous run. Most of that was because she had developed how to pace herself and not just sprint as fast as she could. The only drawback was the throbbing pain that told her that she had probably pushed herself too far this time. She was starting to think that to really get better at running she was going to have to increase her distance much more slowly instead of pushing herself to her limits each and every day.
And so, Fluffy's run finally came to a conclusion. She had run up her first hill today, learned a bit about stretching, and come up with new ways to improve her running abilities. She hoped that she wouldn't have to do this many more times because she could think of many other ways she'd rather be spending her time. "I think the most annoying thing about running is that I'm going to be tired for the rest of the day just for less than an hour of activities. Hopefully it will get easier with time." And with that, Fluffy started walking towards the nearest 'help wanted' sign. She was running low on money and could do with a job or two.
